In 2008 Simple Minds celebrated their past with a weather eye on the future. Some brief mouse-work at YouTube affirms that their sold-out 30th Anniversary stadium tour of the UK and mainland Europe was a roaring success, the Glasgow-formed band delighting fans with a set that included such big-hitters as “Alive And Kicking”, plus every track of their 1982 masterpiece New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84).

In reminding us of their pedigree, Simple Minds were tilling the soil for what would happen next. “We only wanted to shout about our anniversary on the understanding that the new record would sound really fresh”, says front man Jim Kerr. “We wanted to make a full-blooded record of ballsy pop songs; something that belied the fact we’d been together for three decades.”

With Graffiti Soul easily fulfilling that mandate, flagship single “Rockets” is the icing on the cake. Its unforgettable guitar riff, soaring vocal harmonies and hooky handclaps make for the most immediate pop nugget Simple Minds have recorded in years.

“In previous times there would have been a lot of naval gazing about our place in the great scheme of things,” offers Kerr. “But sometimes you have to stop analysing and just get on with it. That’s what we’re doing and we’ve never felt so energised. We’re delighted with this record.”

Graffiti Soul is Simple Minds 15th studio album. It was produced by the band and Jez Coad, and was mixed by Bob Clearmountain in Santa Monica, California. The songs were written in Rome, Sicily, Antwerp and Glasgow, and the core Simple Minds line-up of Jim Kerr (vocals), Charlie Burchill (guitar, keyboards), Mel Gaynor (drums) and Eddie Duffy (bass) recorded the material at Rockfield studios near Monmouth, Wales.

Various events could serve as jumping-off points for the new album’s back-story: the band playing Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday concert in London’s Hyde Park last June, for example, or the industry tremors that rattled their previous record label, Sanctuary. “Unfortunately, the fall-out hit not long after we’d joined them”, notes Kerr of the latter event. The upshot was that the Minds’ 2005 album Black & White 050505 didn’t get the launch or exposure it deserved, but having inked a new deal with Universal, the band now looks set to capitalize on the undoubted strengths of Graffiti Soul.

“We’ve had to overhaul the band in recent years, and this new record finally sees the full fruit of that”, says Jim Kerr. “I still stand by Black & White as a good record, but there was a period before that when we were like a Jumbo Jet down to one engine, and people still expected us to land on the Hudson. From the band itself, to production, to outside writers we’ve got a great team now; people that are able to fill the boots of those who brought great things to Simple Minds in the past.”

Though Charlie Burchill lives in Rome and Jim Kerr is ostensibly based in Sicily, the pair’s home city of Glasgow was to figure significantly in the birth of Graffiti Soul. Late in 2007, Kerr moved back to Glasgow after his mother was diagnosed with cancer. Happily, she responded well to treatment, but Jim wanted to stay around for a while.

Living at his parents’ house, he found himself seated at the old kitchen table where he had once written songs while listening to ideas Charlie Burchill had recorded on C60 cassettes. “I tried it again and it worked”, he says. “Only this time Charlie was emailing me MP3’s from Rome.”

Simple Minds also rehearsed some of the new material in Glasgow, rubbing shoulders with some of the city’s young gunslingers. “It kept us on our toes”, laughs Kerr. “You knew that the gallus kid with the guitar was listening outside and thinking, ‘Go on - impress me, then.’

Travel. Leaving. Returning. The great search. All of these are key themes on Graffiti Soul. As a teenager living in a high-rise flat near Glasgow’s Hampden stadium, Jim Kerr was party to the bigger picture: “You could see the Campsie Fells and you could hear the trains coming and going down below. It was all out there to dream about.”

It was natural, then, that he and pal Charlie Burchill would later hitchhike their way across Europe. They’d only planned to go as far as London to see The Sex Pistols and The Damned, but soon they were in Paris, living their version of Kerouac’s On The Road.

“Last year, when Charlie emailed me an MP3 of a tune that had this train rhythm, all of that came back to me and I thought, ‘Okay - we’re off again’”, explains Kerr. Burchill’s music also painted a picture that chimed with Scots author David Greig’s writings on certain inhabitants of the Russian capital’s netherworld, and soon came the propulsive noir thriller “Moscow Underground.”

For Kerr, returning to Rockfield studios also fired a distinct sense of déjà-vu. This, after all, was the place that had seen Simple Minds shape such seminal records as Real To Real Cacophony (1979) and Empires And Dance (1980).